


The World Keeps Turning

by Damalia (Achrya)



Series: VampireAU [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Armin has a lot of issues, Hurt No Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Pining, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6996409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Damalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't that Armin didn't like Marco. It was just that, sometimes, he hated that Jean gets to keep *his* human and all he can do is watch Eren from afar. Other times though he knows the truth of the matter: He's a monster and Eren isn't. </p><p>Eremin Week Day 5: Supernatural/Monster</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Keeps Turning

**Author's Note:**

> Everything hurts and nothing is okay. Some mentions of suicide attempts (by a vampire so...they didn't work) and prostitution if you're looking for it.  
> Very Owari no Seraph inspired.

“You know,” Levi said as he looked up from his book. “Being dead doesn’t make stalking any less illegal.”

“I’m not stalking him.” And, honestly, what were the cops going to do to him? Arrest him? He was a dead body, all he had to do was take a nap and he'd end up transported the morgue. 

Levi snorted lowly. “We’ve followed your human from school to their job and back here with you doing nothing but sitting and watching.”

He frowned deeply at the window. “He’s not my human.”

“But you are following him. Again. What is that, the second time this year?”

The third, actually, and it was only February. He’d actually gotten better about this, lurking on the edges of his former life, after their maker had died but the past few months had seen him wanting to come out more often. It wasn’t healthy or sane or helping him and his issues but he just...couldn’t seem to stop himself. He got stressed out or sad or angry (or all three) and the itch to see Eren and Mikasa built up until he couldn’t ignore it. But seeing them just made it worse. He always left feeling empty and disgusted with himself, some pathetic monster playing voyeur into a world he no longer was part of.

Armin didn’t say that though, busy watching the outside of the small home they were parked across from. Lights were on inside and he could see shadows through the curtains moving around what he assumed was the living room. He’d never been inside, the small home was something they’d gotten after his death, but he spent a lot of time thinking about how it might have been, what things they would have taken from the apartment to this place. Too much time probably.

A sigh made him turn to face Levi, a flare of impatience sparking in him. The other vampire looked bored, per usual, and like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

“I didn’t ask you to come with me.” In fact he’d been totally prepared to make the trip out to Shiganshina alone and Levi had volunteered himself/told him there was absolutely no way in fuck he was going alone.

It was understandable in a way. The Queen of the tri-state area, Historia, lived in Shiganshina and ran a very tight ship, with no tolerance for people coming and going without checking in with one of her generals. It had to be that way because Erwin Smith, head of a large Hunter clan, was based in the city (no doubt because of it’s large supernatural population) and the tentative peace the two groups enjoyed was because of how carefully things were monitored.

Armin didn’t really want to check in with anyone; there would be questions and other vampires were hard to lie to to he’d have to come clean. But, no matter how you looked at it, ‘I’m in town to follow my former best friend around’ wasn’t the sort of thing that was going to be approved.

Levi and Jean, however, had permission to come and go as they pleased. Historia hadn’t cared for their sire (not that anyone ever did) and when he’d been ‘tragically’ beheaded Levi and Jean had stepped up as the new heads of their bloodline and earned Queen Historia’s favor. Armin, being an ‘infant’ by all measurable standards, hadn’t gotten the same privilege.

There was also the fact he was the one who’d beheaded their maker. Apparently a vampire being able to subvert the Sire-Childe bond, something that was meant to be their most power instinct, was something that made other vampires ‘uneasy’.

Armin attributed it to a fair amount of self inflicted brain damage. He hadn’t handled turning very well and had given just about everything that was supposed to kill vampires a few tries. It made sense to him that all of his stuff might have been scrambled or twisted up as a result.

But the point was Levi had some leeway as far as what he was allowed to do and go went and that extended to Armin when they were together. If someone spotted them it would keep him, and thus everyone in his bloodline, from facing the consequences. Vampires had long memories, held grudges like nobodies business, and were very creative with their punishments.

“I’m sure that would have gone well.” To say that Levi looked unimpressed would have been an understatement. “The last thing we need is you bringing home a stray human as well.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” He snapped then, when Levi’s eyebrows went up, shook his head. “I’m not...it isn’t like that.”

Levi’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel for a moment as he regarded Armin with steely eyes. “So you aren’t coming out here more often because Jean has a human pet all his own now?”

Armin ground his teeth together, staring flatly at the older vampire.

It was true that Jean’s sudden associating with Marco was unexpected. And it was also true that Armin’s reaction, the first time he’d met Marco, had been less than a great first impression.

He’d been in Sasha’s diner wondering what Jean was doing that was making him so late for their usual Monday meetup when the other vampire had walked in with someone he didn’t know. He’d been confused for a moment, since there were no vampires they didn’t know about in Trost (It was *their* city after all.), but then he’d zeroed in on the small pinprick holes in the man’s neck and the way he reeked not just of death but of Jean, who’d smelled like blood and the man trailing after him.

He’d gotten mad, mind flashing back to when he’d been drained and turned, to waking up in the morgue naked, confused, and alone, to being picked up by Jean and Levi and locked up by their sire when he’d refused to accept what had happened and obey. To two years of anger and hurt and abuse and wanting to die all over again.

He’d not so subtly accused Jean of turning the man with him, too deep in his memories to really think straight, and…

It hadn’t gone well. Jean had been hurt that Armin would even think he would do something like that. Marco had been confused about why someone would think he was anything other than human and then disturbed to find out he smelled like a vampire (or zombie or ghoul or...well, undead, basically.) And Armin had just been...not himself.

But they’d gotten past it, sort of. They weren’t really supposed to associate with humans, let alone reveal themselves, make friends, or keep one as a willing blood source, (or, though Jean insisted otherwise, fuck them in the course of what seemed like an actual relationship) but Marco was clearly not the typical human. Normal humans didn’t smell like the dead.

And then there was that freaky eye and the witch association. What Jean was thinking making nice with someone who’d been more or less brought back from the dead by a witch Armin would never know. Witches were nothing but trouble and Jean knew that. If Marco was that important to some witch out there it was only a matter of time before that person came back looking for him.

It was dumb.

And Marco was around all the time. There in the mornings when Armin came back to go to bed, there in the afternoons when he rose, sitting so close to Jean it was like they were trying to crawl in each other's skin sometimes, whispering and laughing and touching. They were close, had gotten close insane fast like they’d known each other for years (impossible since Jean was a bit over a hundred and Marco was in his mid-twenties).

If Armin hadn’t known better he would have thought they shared a blood connection.

“I don’t care about Jean and Marco.” He said after entirely too long a pause to be taken seriously.

“You’re jealous.” Levi said it like it was a forgone conclusion and not a topic worthy of discussion.

Armin scoffed. “I told you, I’m not interested in taking him.”

Except when he was. There had been times….were still times if he was being honest, when he just sat in his room, curled up in the corner of his bed, and thought about taking Eren for his own. (Maybe Mikasa as well.) Just creeping into the house at night, crawling in Eren’s bed, biting him and draining him near dry then feeding him his blood. He would give him plenty; they more given the more ‘like themselves’ a vampire would be and he would make sure Eren had ever bit he could spare. And then he’d take him away to somewhere safe and warm where he could eventually wake up and not be terrified or alone like Armin had been.

They would be able to see places and do so many things that they’d always dreamed about when they’d been younger. The dreams that had kept them going when Armin’s parents and Eren’s mother had died and when Eren’s father had vanished. The dreams that had kept him together when he’d let himself sink to doing truly disgusting things for money.

Eren wouldn’t suffer like he had. He would make sure his change was much better. He would take care of him like a maker should.

Sometimes he dreamed about how Eren would taste. How he would look when Armin’s fangs slid into his neck, the sounds he would make.

But he wouldn’t ever let himself do it. He wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

“Jealous that Jean has a new friend then.” Levi suggested.

Armin blinked. He honestly didn’t even know where to start with that. “What?”

Levi shrugged. “It would be normal considering how close you two are.”

His turned his attention back to the house, wanting no part in what he knew Levi was going to say. This wasn’t the first time Levi, and their maker before him, had tried going down this path, trying to imagine some connection that didn’t exist.

“Jean was the one-”

“The lights are off.” Armin interrupted. It was only around ten PM, not nearly late enough for Eren to have headed to bed already. Especially not on a weekend when Mikasa was still at work. It didn’t make sense for the house to have gone dark like it was. It wasn’t a power outage as far he could tell, the houses next door still looked to have power.

Was something wrong?

He bit his lip, eyes sweeping up and down the lonely street. Streetlights were on, casting their glow into the dark snowy night. It reminded him a lot of the day he’d been picked up and taken to the man who would be his maker. Frigid, snow coming down in tiny icy flakes, the street a mess of dirty slush and ice...bitter and depressing. No cars coming and going, no one out on the sidewalk.

Eren and Mikasa’s house sat, dark and strange, in the middle of it all.

Something didn’t feel right.

He opened his door and stepped out into the snow, ignoring Levi calling to him. He wasn’t going to do anything he shouldn’t, like knock on the door and expose himself. He was just going to peek, maybe. Just to be sure that everything looked okay. That was fine, wasn’t it?

He hurried across the street, holding his hood tight, and after peeking through the front window and seeing nothing walked around the side to the back, trying to decide if maybe he needed to break in. He would need Levi’s help for that, the older vampire had a talent for shapeshifting that was invaluable for breaking and entering, and Armin very much did not. He wasn’t sure he had any particular fun vampire abilities, beyond beyond very stubborn. Jean was a master at glamours and playing with people’s minds, able to put even other vampires under sometimes, and in fact that was why he’d been turned. Levi and Armin had fit their makers ‘type’, small, seemingly delicate and easily dominated, sad and desperate gutter dwellers willing to sell themselves for the right price but Jean? Jean wasn’t like them: good parents, happy childhood, bright future. The allure with Jean had been that he _glowed_.

Even now he glowed and everyone but Jean saw it. In another life he probably would have been a witch and a formidable one at that.

Armin did not glow. He didn’t shapeshift at all and his ability to take people under was limited to humans.

He prefered it that way. He was already a walking bloodsucking corpse, the last thing he needed to add to that was weird ‘force’ abilities and shapeshifting. At least like this he could sort of pretend he was still a normal person.

He needed that sometimes.

He was staring up at the back windows, two that seemed to look into a kitchen and then four smaller ones of the second floor, seriously considering getting Levi when something hit him hard in the back and sent him sprawling into the snowy yard.

If he had been human he was pretty sure the impact of his face hitting the ground would have bloodied his nose at the very least, but instead all it did was sting a little and stun him for a moment. Long enough for a knee to come down between his shoulderblades and his hood to be yanked back. His hair was grabbed, fingers twisting around the lazy bun he’d twisted the top into, and pulled.

“What are you doing here?” A painfully familiar voice demanded. “Did the queen send you?”

Did the...What?

What did Eren know about the queen? Or maybe he meant some other queen?

No, that was dumb, why would he eve-

“I asked you a question!” Something pressed against his exposed neck. For a second it was just a strange chill and then he was screaming as an icy cold burning sensation seared his skin.

Silver. He knew what hit felt like, knew this pain intimately. It was bad, the most painful thing there was to a vampire aside from direct sunlight, and he reacted to it immediately. He twisted, back bowing, then lashed out to push the human on his back with all his strength. His fangs had dropped, splitting his gums and sending blood spilling over his tongue, his vision sharpened even as it was washed with red, and he could hear so much. A heartbeat, fast and panicked like a rabbit, the whoosh of blood in veins, strained breathing with a slightly pained wheeze. He was on his feet, growling, and clutching his neck.

He could feel the skin peeling and bubbling under his fingertips and hissed at the pain as he prodded the burned area.

“A-Armin?”

He snarled at the shocked looking human who was still sprawled on the ground where he’d pushed him too and took a step towards him. Green eyes, wide and almost glowing in the hazy night air, stared at him as fingers twitched around what looked like a solid pillar of brightly polished silver. Another step, teeth bared; the human’s heart started beating harder and faster in an uneven rhythm.

It was like music to him. He wanted to hear it closer. Wanted-

No.

He didn’t want. Not Eren. Not like this.

He blinked, red receding. He stumbled back, nearly tripped over feet that felt entirely too heavy, and shook his head. Shit. Shit. Levi was going to kill him.

He touched his neck again, eyes dropping back to the silver in Eren’s hand. Or he was going to kill Eren. It was against the rules to attack a vampire unprovoked, just as it was against the rules to attack a hunter or kill a human in Historia’s territory.

Or did creeping around someone’s backyard count as provocation? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t-wasn’t-god he needed to calm down. Needed to think. This was not how things were supposed to go. Any of-

“You’re dead.” Eren whispered. He was still sitting in the snow, usually tan skin ashen and washed out in shock. “You...Erwin said you were dead. That they cremated you.”

Armin shivered internally at the thought. He was pretty sure cremation wouldn’t actually kill him (though, admittedly, he’d never tried. Setting himself on fire, yes, but he imagined that was slightly different.) because he’d heal faster than he burned but he was also pretty sure it would hurt a lot. Though, actually, maybe it would have killed him before he’d turned completely and-

Wait. “Erwin told you that? Erwin Smith?” As in the head of the hunters? Why would be be talking to Eren?

His friend nodded, voice dropping to a whisper. “After you...after we had to identify your body-” Armin bit his lip; the time between dying and getting back up wasn’t something he’d been ‘present’ for but he supposed it made sense that Eren and Mikasa would have been called. “The stuff people were saying about you didn’t make sense to me. That you’d OD’d and your body had been dumped by _John_?”

Armin glanced to the side, breaking eye contact, not wanting to give away how much of that was true. Eren's faith in him was...misplaced. 

“I knew something wasn’t right. I asked questions and wouldn’t stop asking and then Erwin came and told me what _really_ happened to you and invited me into the clan...but. He said you...”

Eren stopped, eyes going hard. “You’re a vampire.  _They_ turned you.”

Armin’s heart sank as he touched the burn on his neck again. The way Eren said ‘they’ was all he needed to hear to know his friend’s stance on vampire. Some hunters appreciated the truce and others...others were just chomping at the bit for a chance to catch a vamp stepping out of line and, in the meantime, spent their time hunting creatures who didn’t fall within the truce.

There was a reason Trost had such a big were and fey population.

He let his hand drop down and nodded. “I am. I...shouldn’t have come here. We don’t come back to our old lives-”

“Except to kill your families.”

Armin flinched then shook his head. There were stories like that, about vampire backs wouldn’t accept the newly turned until they ‘did away’ with the old but he was pretty sure that stuff was just the vampire version of messed up campfire tales. Man with a hook hand, razor blade candy, and vampires who killed their human families: it was all on the same level.

“I wouldn’t do that. You know me.”

“No.” Eren’s voice was colder than the frigid night. “I knew Armin. You aren’t Armin. He would have never just... _accepted_ becoming the thing that killed him. He wouldn’t have stayed away for five years.”

His brow furrowed. “Just accepted? You have no idea-

“Arlert?” Levi’s voice rang out in the darkness. Eren jumped to his feet and the pillar turned in his hand to expose a sharpened tip on the end that hadn’t been pressed against Armin’s neck. He barely had time to register it before Levi was stepping into the back yard, a sour expression on his face. He didn’t look surprised to see Eren but, realistically, he’d been aware that there was a human with him already. A person didn’t get to be 300 years old without being able to pick up heartbeats at the absolute least.

If anything he looked annoyed.

Eren, however looked surprised then angry, furious really. He whipped around to face Levi, shoulders rigid and mouth a grim line. “You brought someone else here, to where Mikasa lives?”

Levi’s expression was pure ‘What the fuck did you do now Arlert?’ Armin was familiar with that face. Levi took another step forward and that, it seemed, was too much  for Eren. His hand moved and, with surprising speed for a human, a gun was drawn. Eren’s hand started to twitch up, intent to aim at Levi clear. Armin was at his side between one heartbeat in the next, hand on his face and forcing him to turn and face him.

Getting into people’s heads was, he understood, different for everyone. For him it was looking into someone’s eyes and suddenly being in front of a wall. The fact that it was walls probably said something about him but he didn’t know what it was and he didn’t really care.

Usually in humans it was a piss poor wall, crumbling and full of places to poke through. Vampires tended to be steel, tall and unyielding. Weres were wood and vines twined together. Eren. Eren was bricks and cement, carefully built up and maintained. It was obvious that he’d been taught, probably by other hunters. It was almost perfect except there was a tiny hole, barely there at all.

He doubted anyone else could have made it work but he knew as soon as he saw it that this was a space for him and him alone. A weak point only he could exploit because it was **him**. He poked into, sent power and intent, twisted his will into Eren’s thoughts and laid them out before his eyes. He left his mind drift over the rage that boiled deep in his friend, understood that it had driven him to the clan and, in less than five years, had made him a fantastic hunter. He saw that deep down in there somewhere the rage had started as pain and hurt and some tiny flickers of love. He felt the blood that Eren had on his hands now.

He could see how good Eren was at killing, though not nearly good enough that he would have had a chance against Levi alone so, really, Armin was doing him a favor here. If Eren was willing to try taking on a vampire all alone maybe...maybe it would better to take his knowledge of how to do it. Just delete the fight from his memory. He brushed over those images and thoughts carefully, memorized them all to carry with him, then left them as they were. 

It wasn't his place. What he was doing was bad enough. 

“You didn’t see me.” He said. He pitched his voice low and sweet then, thinking better of it, turned to the whispering voice he’d once read stories about far away place in. Quiet and secretive, just for them, for no one’s parents would overhear. “No one was following you today. Armin is dead.”

There was resistance, a sharp stab of anger and betrayal that came with an image of himself as Eren saw him now: twisted, horrible sharp teeth exposed in an animal like snarl, eyes that glowed a startling blue, deathly pale skin, strange and inhuman, and an impression of ‘wrong’, but he brushed it aside. This wasn’t his specialty, Jean could have done it better and faster, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted. It helped that it was Eren. He knew Eren. He’d always known Eren and always would.

He wrapped up the darkness in layers of his own willpower then buried it under the wall and smoothed the spot over until no one else would be able to find it. When he was done he blinked and back in the snowy backyard staring into vacant green eyes.

“Go inside.”

Eren did as he was told, moving jerkily as if he was a puppet on the strings of an inexperienced master. There was probably some truth to that.

“You think that’s going to hold or should I have Jean-”

“No!” The idea of someone else, even Jean, crawling around in Eren’s head made him want to be sick. “No. It’ll hold.”

And if it didn’t? If Eren went to Smith about having been put under against his will, something else that was against the rules, Armin would take the blame and, if needed, he would break his bond to Jean and Levi to keep them out of it. What were they going to do anyway, kill him?  

He wasn’t entirely sure he would mind. He’d always known there was no going back, that his human life was lost to him, but seeing himself like Eren saw him now? A monster? Knowing for sure there was nothing here for him?

What could be worse than that?

“Let’s go.” He said once the lights inside were back on.

For a change of pace there was no lecture or snide remark as they walked back to the car.

Maybe it was time to take Jean up on that offer to just bury his human life somewhere deep in his brain.

**Author's Note:**

> This is, I suppose, an intro to Armin and Eren for a larger story just as the story before this was an intro to Marco and Jean. Hopefully it stands alone well.


End file.
